Sunday, February 7, 2010

Painting Mojo





I spent a large portion of yesterday building a tau army. This means very little painting was done, but loads of drill work instead. After my 100th magnet I decided to try out some grey primer. Rather than waste a 40k mini, I picked up a bunch of random fantasy dudes from my bits box. Since orcs are basically fantasy I tossed one of them in as well. What did I learn?

  1. Just like priming with white, grey requires me to relearn my paint recipes.
  2. Washes do not instantly shade the way they do over a white base coat. Unlike white basing, grey requires build up of lights rather than building down to shadow. For me this means I use more paint. More Paint=Bad.
  3. I would much prefer a very light grey or white base coat to the Armory Gray Primer I used.
  4. Some days painting mojo just fails!
Since I am determined to get some work in today I also tried to produce snow bases again. This is my third attempt at this. Like before I think I am close, but the bases do not feel right to me. I think the base looks better without the snow effects. I am looking for some dark bases to tie into my Tau army, which is leaning towards a turquoise, bone, dark grey color scheme. Sept markings will be bright orange. On the other scale of things, I feel like a white base coat, airbrush of blood red, some orange highlights and lots of battle damage might be better.

3 comments:

  1. Have you tried Army Painter's new color primers. I got a can of brown leather primer for my Warriors of Chaos and it is a god-send. You might be able to find a color primer that suits your minis.

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  2. I think I need to relax. I have been worked up all weekend, and I think it is transferring to my painting! I just tried airbrushing over the grey primer and it worked fine. I don't know what my problem was earlier!

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  3. If I might be so bold to offer some advice on the snow effect. You need more snow on the base. I have never seen snow in the wild that looked like what you have tried out in the posted pic (That came out harsh, I'm sorry - it wasn't intended).

    If you are only wanting a thin scatter, then the snow is more likely to be slushy. I would try to fill in the full base sans the grass effects and the tops of the rocks which would protude out of the snow.

    The recipe I now use is a PVA - Skull White - dash of water mix applied to the base and then dusted with snow effect. Let this dry and then reapply. You don'e want to go overboard with the white, just enough to tint it a bright white.

    Hope that is off some use to you.

    Pom

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